redirecting the AppData folder

[dibekem]

Hi Guys.

I’d like to ask about redirecting the AppData folder. Does it really slows down applications performance if Iredirect users AppData forlder? The reason I’d like to do it is to reduce thelogin times for users.

Thanks

[ChrisH]

If you were looking to reduce log in times, this would be the last thing you would want to do; however if you mean you want to reduce the time for a first logon to a machine you want to look at a central default profile or a mandatory profile.

[psydii]

Do not redirect AppData. Some applications expect this folder to be on a local disk. The network has different performance characteristics.

[dibekem]

Hi. Well what I'm trying to do is to reduce roaming profile sizes. Just notice that some of the teachers had 3, 4 and even 900 mb profile sizes. Pretty big! Also just today one of the teacher reported that her profile is coming up as temporary profile whenever she logs in on a pc other than her usual pc. Checked her profile at that pc and turned out her outlook ost file 4.3gb and its located in the appdata folder. Do you guys know how to safely relocated that to the my documents folder where is already a setup for redirection.

 

Thanks

[themightymrp]

Try using WinDirStat (free) on a few of the profiles and see which folders are using the most space. Some programs stick files in the "Roaming" section of appdata that really serve no real purpose.

 

You can then use Group Policy to exclude these folders from the profile. The policy is under:

 

User Config - Policies - Admin Templates - System - User Profiles - Exclude the following directories

 

To exclude subfolders of the Appdata you can just enter Appdata\Roaming\ProgramName and separate entries with a semi-colon

 

I have managed to get profiles that range between 4 and 30Mb at the most (and they are usually Administrator profiles)

[dibekem]

I see thanks for that.

What is the file is in appdata\local? Would that follow the user when logged into another computer?

 

Thanks

[themightymrp]

The appdata\local folder shouldn't really be roaming in your profile at all. I've had issues with this in the past and posted my fix here:

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows-server-2008-r2/108941-roaming-profie-oddities.html#post1127181

[dibekem]

Great!

 

Thanks

[dibekem]

Right. I excluded in the appdata\roaming the themes, privacIE, cookies. This was about 3.5 MB.

 

I checked on the server a profile and there isn't a local or local low folder inside appdata. Last time I looked on the users pc and I think that fooled me. 😃

Edited June 30, 2014 by dibekem

[themightymrp]

That would do it How big are your profiles working out at now (on the server side)?

[dibekem]

Well ive got an issue on the server side. I can only allowed to look at a profile once I've taken the ownership. So ive been playing with an old profile. I think if i take the ownership of a profile and then give the ownership back to the user i don't corrupt the profile but I can still view it. Is that correct? If you see what I mean;)

[themightymrp]

Yep I know what you mean, there is a setting somewhere for adding the Administrator to the permissions of a profile at the time of creation (which fixes that problem) but by default you would get the ownership issues you describe. It shouldn't make any difference to the users of said profile, I know I've done it before. As long as they still have the correct NTFS permissions throughout the profile it won't make much difference on who is the owner.

 

Try picking a single user that you know had a large profile and test it on them

[dibekem]

Well last week a teacher started to get the you have been logged in with a temporary profile message whenever she logged in on a new pc. I looked at her profile which I was allowed to go in ( strangely) then I though lets look at her security settings and yep i was the owner of her profile. So I changed that to give her the ownership and today its working:) not sure how it changed tho. But its working. Okay i might just start looking at each profile. Would I mess up a profile if a user is logged in while I'm playing with ownership and stuff?

[themightymrp]

Not mess it up as such but as soon as they log off the profile will be re-copied back from the laptop/PC to the network, probably overwriting any changes you made :-/

 

Best bet is to do things when they are logged off

[dibekem]

I see. Okay will do that. Thanks you've been very helpful!